Part 10 (1/2)
After supper, Hop. and I lighted our cigars and ”railroaded” for awhile, then ”Her Eyes” went to the piano and sang a dozen songs as only a trained singer can. Her voice was wonderfully sweet and low. They were old songs, but they seemed the better for that, and while she sang Hopkins's cigar went out and he just gazed at her with pride and joy in every lineament of his scarred and furrowed face.
Little Maddie was allowed to sit up in honor of ”Untle Tummy,” but after awhile the little head bobbed quietly and the little chin fell between the verses of her mother's song, and ”My Lady of the Eyes” took her by the hand and brought her over to us.
”Tell papa good-night and Uncle Chum my good-bye, dear, and we'll go to bed.”
Hopkins kissed the baby, and I got my hug, and another to take to my ”ittle dirl,” and Mrs. Hopkins held out both her hands to me.
”Good-bye, dear Chum,” said she, ”my love to you and yours, now and always.”
Hopkins put his arm around his wife, kissed her forehead and said:
”Sweetheart, I'm going to tell Chum a story.”
”And don't forget the hero,” said she, and turning to me, ”Don't believe all he says, and don't blame those that he blames, and remember that what is, is best, and seeming calamities are often blessings in disguise.”
Hopkins and I looked into each other's faces and smoked in silence for ten minutes, then he turned to his secretary and, opening a drawer, took out a couple of cases and opened them. They contained medals. Then he opened a package of letters and selected one or two. We lighted fresh cigars and Hopkins began his story.
”My father was a pretty well-to-do business man and I his only child. My mother died when I was young. I managed to get through a grammar school and went to college. I wanted to go on the road from the time I could remember and had no ambition higher than to run a locomotive. That was my ideal of life.
”My father opposed this very strenuously, and offered to let me go to work if I'd select something decent--that's the way he put it. He used to say, 'Try a brick-yard, you might own one some day, you'll never own a railroad.' I had my choice, college or something decent,' and I took the college, although I didn't like it.
”The summer before I came of age my father died suddenly and my college life ended.”
Here Hopkins fumbled around in his papers and selected one.
”Just to show you how odd my father was, here is the text of his will, leaving out the legal slush that lawyers always pack their papers in:
”'To my son, Steadman Hudson Hopkins, I leave one thousand dollars to be paid immediately on my demise. All the residue of my estate consisting of etc., etc.'--six figures, Chum, a snug little wad--'shall be placed in the hands of three trustees'--naming the presidents of three banks--'to be invested by them in state, munic.i.p.al or government bonds, princ.i.p.al and interest accruing to be paid by said trustees to my son hereinbefore mentioned when he has pursued one calling, with average success, for ten consecutive years, and not until then. All in the best judgment of the trustees aforenamed.
”'To my son I also bequeath this fatherly advice, knowing the waste of money by heirs who have done nothing to produce it, and knowing that had I been given a fortune at the beginning of my career, it would have been lost for lack of business experience, and knowing too, the waste of time usually made by young men who drift from one employment or occupation to another'--having wasted fifteen years of my own life in this way--I make these provisions in this my last will and testament, believing that in the end, if not now, my son will see the wisdom of this provision, etc., etc.'
”The governor had a long, clear head and he knew me and young men in general, but bless you, I thought he was a little mean at the time.
”I turned to the trustees and asked what they would consider as fulfilling the requirements of the will.
”'Any honorable employment,' answered the oldest man of the trio.
”The next day, I went to see Andy Bridges, general superintendent of the old home road, who had been a friend of father's, and told him I wanted to go railroading. He offered to put me in his office, but I insisted on the footboard, and to make a long story short, was firing inside of three weeks and running inside of three years.
”I was the proudest young prig that ever pulled a throttle. I always loved the work and--well, you know how the first five years of it absorbs you if you are cut out for it and like it and intend to stay at it.
”I had been running about two years, and had paid about as much attention to young women as I had to the subject of astronomy, until Madelene Bridges came out of a Southern convent to make her home with her uncle, our 'old man.'
”The first time I saw her I went clean, stark, raving, blind, drunken daft over her. I tried to argue and reason myself out of it, but it was no go. I didn't even know who she was then.
”But I was in love and, being so, wasn't hardly safe on the road.
”Then I spruced up and started in to see if I couldn't interest her in me half as much as I was interested in her.
”I didn't have much trouble to get a start, for Andy Bridges had come up from the ranks and hadn't forgotten it--most of 'em do--and welcomed any decent young man in his house, even if he was a car hand. Madelene had a couple of marriageable cousins then and that may account for old Andy.